“He must be quite a boy himself.”

“I wish you could see Alaska. Though you’d probably hate it. Lots of people do—even people who live there. Even people who’ve lived there for a long time.”

“But not you, h’m?”

“You’re laughing at me, but I don’t care. It’s heavenly and luxurious here, and it’s rough and pretty uncomfortable there, sometimes. But everything is still to be done there, and maybe that’s why I like it better. The old pioneer spirit, inherited. Isn’t it tiresome! But that’s what makes it exciting for me. Here you just take everything for granted—water and electricity and concerts and high buildings and oil burners and stuff. Here the cities are all finished. You just keep on adding trimmings. You take up the old water pipes and put in bigger ones—or the electricity coils or whatever they are. You tear down the enormous buildings that are perfectly good and just put up buildings more enormous. Bigger. More. More. Maybe I’m kind of homesick. Isn’t that unadult!”

“The masochistic type, aren’t you? You want to be uncomfortable. Tell you what I’ll do for you. I heard Mom say at breakfast that we’re having Cornish hen for dinner. I’ll take you down to Greasy Jo’s in Skid Row instead.”

“We can get Cornish hen at Nick’s Caribou Café.”

“Where’s that?”

“The Ice Palace.”

“Where’s—oh, you told me. No more travel talks, please. And all that wise old philosophy you’ve been brought up on.”

“Go on—sneer! But I wish you could meet them.”

“Meet who? Oh, your—the one you call Grampa Thor, and that old nurse of yours?”

“Yes. Yes. They’re different from the people Outside. I don’t mean better—I mean they want something terribly but not just for themselves, it’s a cause, it’s a crusade, it’s like the Spirit of ’76—that sounds stuffy—–”

“I’m afraid it does.”

“Not if you knew the Alaskans I mean. Paul and Addie Barnett and George Sundborg—he’s an editor in Juneau—and the Atwoods in Anchorage and Herb Hilscher and Eva McGowan in Fairbanks, and the Nordales, and Bob Bartlett our Delegate, he’s just the most wonderful—and Ernest Gruening—he was our Governor, you know—no, you don’t know, I suppose—they live in Washington anyway, those two—I mean Washington D.C., not your Washington—I wish you could—I love them—–” She stopped jerkily as she looked, wide-eyed, at the dry cynical eyes regarding her. He was staring at her with the gaze of a man who loathes the first sign of hysteria. And then she was weeping. “I’m sorry. How idiotic. Homesick—at my age! And I was going to keep a stiff upper lip.”

“No, don’t. A stiff upper lip never gets kissed.” His other arm came round her. He kissed her as one would kiss a weeping child, tenderly, to comfort her.

With an unerring sense of the dramatic Dina Drake came into the dim quiet room. She did not apologize.

“Bay, you bad boy, what are you doing to that poor kid!”

“Kissing her,” Bay said. “Very nice, too.”